Queer Beacon

Childstar (2004) - LightShed 5

Bad movie.  Lots of twists and turns in the plot, all desperate, all bad.  Don't bother with this piece of crap.

Here, Mark Rendall is a childstar.  Jennifer Jason-Leigh plays his mom.  There's this chauffeur who becomes the legal guardian to the childstar. 

There's a tiny bit of gay content.  In one scene, the director of a movie the childstar is shooting tells the childstar his outfit looks too sporty.  The childstar brat asks the director what he meant with "sporty."  The brat asks: "When you say sporty, do you mean gay?"  He said it like that was something bad.  I already said that using the word "gay" to describe something you think is uncool is not nice.  But the kid is a big nuisance and does everything wrong, so his usage of gay with a bad connotation is actually a good thing for us (an idiot using the word gay for something the idiot doesn't like). 

Later on we have the suggestion that this older guy has something going on with his pool boy, but no hard evidence was given to us, so that's out.  There was also something about a goldfish up the childstar's butt.  Like a goldfish buttplug, but I'll leave it out too.

Don't waste your time.  I don't know what I was thinking.

Crash (2004) - No Gay Content

Outstanding movie, even without gay content.  Although there was one scene which may be interpreted as gay content, it involves Ryan Phillippe picking up someone off the road, but I'll leave it out.

Here, a bunch of characters interact because of a car accident.  Racial prejudices clout their judgment.  Excellent.  The characters include Sandra Bullock actually acting, can you believe it?  I went into the movie thinking, oh god, there are professionals in the movie, Don Cheadle is in it, what is Bullock doing there? Seriously.  But she was great! Get out now, go rent it!  Or at the very least listen to In the Deep, by Bird York. 

Capote (2005) - LightShed 9

The movie tells us the story of Philip Seymour-Hoffman's character, Capote, of course, in his incredibly obsessive and original book project.  It involves a gruesome crime.

The fact that Capote was gay is widely known but that was not the point of the movie.  That is great, the movie shows a man just going about his business and revolutionizing story telling, and that man is gay.  Simple.  Philip Seymour Hoffman's partner is played, well, by Bruce Greenwood.

I did not give it the highest score because Capote was selfish, really self-centered (I could not believe how cold he was in that scene with Catherine Keener, when she was all happy her book was going to be big, and he just shrugs it off -- Keener plays Capote's close friend Harper Lee).  Also, there is a scene that suggests an encounter with a hustler.  Not too nice.  Still, the score I give the movie is high.

The acting is truly superb.  Get out now.  Go see it.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, and Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) - No Gay Content

Nothing.  Decent movie though (a little too much on the childish side though).  These kids are sent to a big mansion.  In one of the bedrooms one of the kids finds a secret doorway to another world, hidden in a wardrobe.  Seriously.  Wait for the DVD.

Cake (2005) - LightShed 9

This vehicle for Heather Graham was not that good. I would not recommend it. However, the portrayal of gays is pretty good. In the movie, Heather Graham is a travel writer, who has to suddenly handle her family’s magazine empire (particularly, a bride and wedding magazine). Her love interests are both Taye Diggs and David Sutcliffe (yeah, busy girl).

Our token gay here is played by Keram Malicki-Sánchez (never saw him before), Heather Graham’s flamboyant gay assistant, who, by the end of the movie is even able to write a story on equal marriage for the magazine. Additional kudos for the movie are granted for a scene in which Heather Graham asks David Sutcliffe to dance with a tranny, and he dances with her, a sensual, close dance. Very nice. Straight guy dancing with a tranny. No problem.

Again, chick flicks rule!

Clerks (1994) - Shipwreck 2

The movie stars nobody and nobody in the role of clerks at this joint in the middle of nowhere. Ok, the movie was made in 1994 and perhaps there was a little less homophobia awareness, but this movie was awful. I could not believe it. The movie was sprinkled with homophobia, I could not believe it.

One of the worst cases happened when nobody 1 tells nobody 2 that his ex-girlfriend had "half-cheated" on him. What happened was, his girlfriend wanted to cheat on him at this party with some guy, who would have supposedly been waiting for her in a dark bedroom, but nobody 1 was the actual guy in that bedroom, and the girlfriend only found out she was actually having sex with her own boyfriend after she groaned the wrong name and lights were on, and she was shocked. In the other dark bedroom, the guy who was supposedly going to hook up with the cheater-girlfriend, ended up hooking up with another guy, and nobody 1 says the two guys were now living somewhere, raising sheep (or goats).  Later on, while recounting that half-cheating story, nobody 2 says that the ex-girlfriend lead the guy who she was supposed to have sex with, into a “deviant lifestyle.” 

I gotta give it up for Kevin Smith though (the writer/director).  The story and most of the other little sub-plots in the movie were pretty ingenious.  That actually turns this movie into a worse case of a shipwreck -- you know, a movie that is otherwise good and likable is used to spread homophobia, or worse, use the gays for a cheap laugh.

There were various other homophobic slurs uttered throughout the movie (you know, the usual…faggot, bla bla bla).  Shame on you Smith! No wonder GLAAD was all over your ass in 2001. 

And you think that having an openly gay older brother would help stop the homophobia?  Think again.  Kevin has an openly gay older brother, Donald Smith.

The Constant Gardener (2005) - LightShed 8

The movie stars Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz. I was ill (yes, migraines) through the last part of the movie, so I actually missed on a lot of it, but I was lucid through most of the movie, enough to understand and appreciate the role of our gay here. I liked what I saw.

Our gay here is Weisz’ doctor and humanitarian friend Hubert Kounde (I don’t remember seeing him in anything else). We (and Ralph Fiennes) are lead to believe during a good part of the movie that Weisz is cheating on him (Fiennes) with Kounde. Only after Weisz’ death (she dies early in the movie so we are not attached to the character enough to make us cry over her death – which was good I think) Fiennes asks Weisz’ friend if she knew about a possible affair between his wife and Kounde. Weisz’ friend then shows Fiennes’ a picture of Weisz, Kounde, and another guy, and she says that other guy was Kounde’s boyfriend. Fiennes then wondered how come he never knew Kounde was gay, and he is then reminded that Kounde kept his homosexuality in the closet because homosexuality is a crime in Africa (where most of the movie takes place).

That was great. The news that Kounde was gay came as a relief to Fiennes, and we were also reminded of the absurdity of the laws of Africa (as it pertains to homosexuality). Moreover, Kounde’s character is braver than a lesbian and accompanies Weisz in a daunting crusade to find the truth about some human rights violations perpetrated by evil drug companies. Yay!
The movie did not get a greater LightShed score because of one comment made by Bill Nighy (did he play a gay rock star in Love Actually?). Nighy is a high ranking diplomat who at some point tries to make Fiennes believe that Kounde actually killed Weisz. Fiennes then mentions ironically that gay men do not usually rape and kill their female friends, to which Nighy replies something like “Well, I knew some pretty savage queens in my time.” It is true though that the negative comment could be dismissed as something uttered by a villain in an attempt to save face.